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The wider field of discourse studies is still only beginning to turn its attention to social media despite a number of notable scholarly works. But as yet there has been little that has dealt specifically with issues of multicultural discourse – how language, identity, cross-cultural social relations and power play out in the rapidly evolving landscape of social media. In this paper, I show why discourse studies must engage with theories and empirical work on social media across academic fields beyond discourse studies and linguistics, at how these can help best frame the kinds of research that needs to be done, how to best formulate some of the basic questions of critical discourse analysis for this new communicative environment. I use this as a platform to point to the areas where multicultural discourse studies can work – where all the ambiguities of former studies of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ are present, but realised in new ways. Yet these new forms of communication are fused into wider patterns of changing cultural values about forms of social structure, knowledge itself and the kinds of issues that tend to form our individually civic spheres.
The nature, location and dynamic of discursive power in Social Media, or broadly speaking the participatory web, is fl uid, changeable, and non-static . Social Media provides all forms of offl ine communication and beyond through mediation of electronic devices. I view and defi ne Social Media by the communicative affordance they provide at the intersection of mass and interpersonal communication, i.e., as a new paradigm of communication. Social Media Communication is viewed as electronically mediated communication across any electronic platforms, spaces, sites, and technologies in which users can: (a.) work together in producing and compiling content; (b.) perform interpersonal communication and mass communication simultaneously or separately -sometimes mass performance of interpersonal communication and ; (c.) have access to see and respond to institutionally (e.g., newspaper articles) and user-generated content/texts . This would then include obvious Social Networking Sites (SNSs) such as Facebook and Instagram; websites which are focused on crowd sourcing content, e.g., Wikipedia, electronic forums etc.; link sharing/management sites, e.g., Digg or Balatarin; micro/blogging sites, e.g., tumblr and Twitter; and Instant Messaging Apps with the possibility of creating group communication such as What'sApp and Telegram. The essence of Social Media therefore is their focus on facilitating 'participation and interaction, with the result that the content of what is developed and shared on the internet is as much a product of participation as it is of traditional creative and publishing/broadcasting processes' (Seargeant and Tagg 2014: 4).
The growing popularity of computer mediated communication (CMC), as shown in mushrooming digital technologies available for the public, has brought a unique challenge for researchers: new, emerging online practices are taken for granted so quickly that when they have been sufficiently incorporated into teaching and research, a sense of datedness is almost inevitable. As such, the merit of CMC research often hinges on whether a study can " capture the moment ", revealing the deeper social-cultural dynamics that will exist beyond digital infrastructure. In this regard, " Discourse and identity on Facebook " offers an insightful exploration into online identity construction and performance. It adds another welcoming volume to the widely-circulated Bloomsbury Discourse Series. The central focus of the volume is how Facebook, as a vibrant socio-cultural arena, mediates online identity manifestations. Based on a detailed longitudinal online ethnography of five Greek Facebook users, it convincingly demonstrates the diversity and complexity of online identity formation.
Abstract This article examines how people complain about technology. Using discourse analysis, we inspect sixteen hours of video-recorded focus-group interviews and focused one-on-one discussions where technology was topicalized. We investigate these conversations paying attention to (i) features of language and its situated delivery, including emphasis, word choice, metaphor, and categorizations; and (ii) how these accomplish social actions. We show how interactants use narratives of complaint-like activities about hypothetical categories of people and confessions of their own complainable participation to accomplish a 'bemoaning' speech act that manages competing affiliations, demands, and disagreements to construct reasonable moral identities in the situated interaction. By engaging in specific micro-level discursive practices in interaction, participants produce and reproduce what new technologies 'mean' to them and for contemporary society. This shows how important it is to examine opinions as situated actions rather than as simple facts about what people believe.
Review of Communication, 2018
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a particular strand of discourse analysis that focuses on the role of language in society and in political processes, traditionally targeting texts produced by elites and powerful institutions, such as news and political speeches. The aim is to reveal discourses buried in language used to maintain power and sustain existing social relations. However, since the internet and social media have come to define much of the way that we communicate, this brings numerous challenges and also opportunities for CDA. The relationship between text and ideology, and between the author and reader, appears to have changed. It is also clear that new methods are required for data collection, as content takes new forms and also moves away from running texts to language that is much more integrated with forms of design, images, and data. Also, new models are required to address how the technologies themselves come to shape the nature of content and discourse.